Renault Scenic Review from Belgium

2007 Renault Scenic diesel

Summary:

Too many useless electrical gimmicks that achieve nothing but infuriate the driver

Faults:

This was a hire car for two weeks. Nothing went wrong but we all had problems starting the bloody thing, no matter what we did. We had 3 different drivers who all had the same problem. Quite often after trying to start it and then giving up, it would spring to life on it's on accord. Disconcerting.

All doors except the driver's whistled like crazy above 120kmh.

When the windshield washer was used, some of the spray entered the cabin and which meant the cabin smelt like windscreen cleaning fluid.

Clutch was a little squeaky.

General Comments:

We are not making these comments from an ownership perspective, but as a group of people who had the misfortune to have one of these for two weeks and covered a lot of miles in it. We have hired similar vehicles to this before and all the other cars have been fine compared to this.

Plastickey, cheap looking and feeling interior. On the plus side it does have lots of handy storage compartments and seating is versatile. Not a pretty car but the exterior paintwork was OK.

Seats were very uncomfortable on long trips, for all of us. Most of us never had this problem before so it isn't as though we are fussy about this.

Electrical handbrake is a useless gimmick, which can only go wrong one day. Starting the car seemed to be a black art, which none of us could master. Radio likwise, unnecessary complex.

Dash layout hard to read at a glance and stupidly placed in the middle of the dash. Fuel gauge especially dumb, making it hard to tell how much fuel is really left.

Credit card style key-fob stupidly designed so it is had to find the buttons, let alone figure out which is which. Battery fell out of it as well. Just a real cheap feeling thing.

Brakes were very sensitive to light pedal pressure but nothing you can't get used to. Performance was OK. I thought it handled OK for a large vehicle.

It was hard to tell when the indicators were on, because of the ridicolous positioning of the arrows within the mess that is the dashboard. They also make very little noise so you don't get the normal indicator click-click that you do in other cars.

When things ain't broke don't fix it. A traditional key works fine to open and start a car. Normal analogue guages are easier to read. Too many gimmicks which didn't add any value for us. The car must be an auto-electrician's nightmare.

2nd Apr 2008, 15:31

I can't imagine how you can find this car uncomfortable. We've driven 500 miles (800 km) in a day on many occasions in ours and felt fine.

Starting the car is easy - the dash tells you "PRESS CLUTCH AND START, OR PRESS BRAKE AND START" in big, fluorescent blue green upper case text. How much easier do you want it? How did you cope with the clutch pedal and gearlever, if you struggled with this? I agree the radio operation is hateful though!

The fuel gauge has little bars that disappear as the fuel level drops, and then bleeps at you and blinks orange when low. Just like every other digi-dash in the history of time. You can also select a mode on the fuel computer to tell you, in the same big, fluorescent upper case text exactly how many miles you have left at your current average fuel consumption. I don't think it's the car that's "especially dumb"

We've had no problems with our key card in 3 years and it works fine. I agree, the unlabelled buttons are a pain though, and I also agree on the oversensitive brakes.

The indicator telltales are easy to spot, and the clicking noise is no less prominent than in 99% of the other cars on the road today.

You didn't like the car - fine, and you made that very clear, but why write a "review" on here slagging it off?